Judo Mat Moves for BJJ: Getting a Slick Choke

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Published February 8, 2014
· Updated March 26, 2015

As many of you know I like to take grappling to a scientific level. I study the best in the world, analyze statistics, get private lessons with black belt world champions, and cross train in other grappling martial arts. There’s a reason they call me the BJJ Nerd. But all jokes aside I’m sure if you have read my stuff on skill development you know about my projects. Well I discovered this cool choke in my “Operation Trap Door” project. This project was designed all around submitting our opponent when they think they’re going to escape an inferior position. It really catches people quick and we can get a quick tap

Learning from Judoka’s

Judo has a special place in my heart alongside BJJ and wrestling, so when I was training with my Judo friends I was enthralled to see this move. I actually taught this one down at a seminar I did at National Martial Arts in Oklahoma. The technique can be seen in the video below:

This technique starts with us on our opponent’s back. Whenever we are on someone’s back it is important that we utilize proper pressure. Our knees should be below their lowest ribs squeezing in tight. We want to cause pain in their organs. We should be stretching them out causing a “banana bend” in their back. Finally we need to get a collar grip as high up their neck as we can, it helps to open their lapel and feed our hand up until it cannot go any higher. These pressures make our opponent focus on pan and not escaping the position.

For our opponent to escape they need to get their shoulder blades to the mat as to mess up our alignment. If we are going for this choke we will let them. However we will not give up on our hooks or the lapel grip. For general back mount maintenance it is important we don’t just give up on our holds when our opponent is countering. This will create a scramble that we do not want, we would rather use these holds to attain the position back or set up an attack,

At this point our opponent’s shoulder should be in our sternum. We will take the hand not grabbing the lapel and come behind our opponent’s head with our knuckles facing forward. We also need to go underneath the topside arm with this hand as well to set up proper positioning.

To finish the choke pull the lapel grip under and towards you and punch the hand behind the head away. You should soon get the tap.

Conceptual Thinking

A cool concept you can start to play around with is forcing our opponent into these submissions without them even knowing. Just based off of what we know on how our opponent will escape just how in the choke above I know he wants to get his shoulders to the mat so I use that against him. We can also improperly position ourselves to force our opponent into a certain reaction that will set up our attack. A much less experienced grappler can tap out a much more experienced one by using this concept

Some other key concepts that are similar to this technique is one about scrambles. In short if we are in a dominate position we want to stop scrambles, if we are in a bad position we want one. The combination if key conceptual understanding and hard training is the key to success in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu